It's very rare that I feel a book cheated me, that I get mad at a book.the book's author.but both are true with "Darkness." It's bullshit.Īnd that's a shame because, as I say, the part about Okinawa is really good.assuming it's true. He didn't! He writes as if he did, but buried in a waffling, weaselly 340-word paragraph deep in the Author's Note at the end of the book is the acknowledgement that he only saw combat on Okinawa. No, more than that, I want my time back, the emotional energy I invested in this book-I want it all back.Įven the blurb about the book here in Goodreads says, "Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese." No, he didn't.
It was bad enough when I was muttering to myself, no, Roosevelt didn't deliberately lure the Japanese into attacking the US no, there were no P-40s on Guadalcanal in September, 1942 no, there isn't a village named Nakasoni on Guam no, Hirohito didn't say "Hell is upon us"-Osami Nagano did no, improperly field-stripping a BAR will not cause the recoil spring to rip your throat out (I asked!)., but when I learned that all the detailed descriptions of his experiences were completely fictional-and he just adds it as an "oh, by the way" codicil-for crying out loud. The ridiculous LA Times blurb asserts the book "belongs with the best war memoirs ever written." Really LA Times? Really? Why did he write all that other crap, leading the reader to believe he served where he didn't and did things he didn't do? It's stupid.
He only served on Okinawa-and that's more than enough! And when he writes about the two months in combat he served there before being wounded so severely he was evacuated, his writing becomes intense and sincere. It's only in a note at the end of the book that the reader learns that the author did not serve on Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, or Iwo Jima.
But more than that, it is filled with fabricated incidents, recounted in great detail, as if the author had participated in them. It's inconceivable to me that this man is a historian. Except for the part about Okinawa I would have given this a "0." Just terrible-inaccuracy after inaccuracy on every page.
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